Evolution: How Can We Come From Monkeys

What is evolution? Evolution in modern terms is fairly easy to understand. Evolution is the theory that life on earth began with a single celled organism that lived more that 3.5 billion years ago that slowly evolved into

He finally observed that overtime these birds developed different physical characteristics to help them be able to survive and adapt to their surroundings. Darwin developed the “Natural Selection” theory that stated that plants and animals adapt to their surroundings and environments in order to survive. He also stated that older generations of these species would eventually die out, because they do not have the newer characteristics that needed to be developed in order to live.

What is evolution? Evolution is the idea that all species are descendants of ancient species that are different from modern day species. The idea of evolution is controversial, because there are counter arguments that species are related based on religion, or arguments that evolution has not been supported with enough evidence. Despite the counter arguments, evolution is a scientific theory that is supported from connections through science, technology, society and environment.

Due to the phenotype or expression of the pea plant’s petal colors, Mendel concluded that there are recessive and dominant alleles within populations. Additionally, Mendel’s experiment supported the notion that there are genotypes (genetic makeup) and phenotypes (gene expression) within populations, and that all species are related and have common ancestry. Due to implication, there is evidence to suggest that brain and behavior in complex animals like humans evolved from the brain and behavior of simpler animals, but also depend on learning

For anyone who’s heard of Mendel’s pea plants should also be familiar with the idea of the heritability of traits. Gregor Mendel was the one accredited with coming up with the idea of genetic heritability; the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring. With his peas, Mendel demonstrated that offspring were not the blended versions of their parents. Mendel also created a list of laws, such as the law of segregation, independent assortment, and of dominance. Each law has been tried and tested, and is now considered absolute truth by the scientific community;

Before Gregor Mendel’s discoveries in the mid 1800’s, most people had no clear idea as to why their children, and grandchildren, looked like them! Most people assumed that because the child was in their family, and created by them, that familiar looking offspring just simply happened. Gregor Mendel put all that guessing to rest. Mendel did experiments on two different colored pea plants. In the first test, he mixed a purple flowered pea plant, and a white flowered pea plant. He let these plants fertilize and have off spring. These two plants were known as the Parent generation (P Generation). The offspring they produced were known as the F1 Generation. The P Generation created an F1 Generation that was all purple pea plants. Mendel then bred a new generation of pea plants ONLY breeding plants with themselves. This new generation was known as the F2 Generation. Within the F2 Generation, the white flowered pea plants began to show back up. The ratio of purple flowered pea plants, to white flowered pea plants was a 3:1 ratio. Mendel also noted that the purple and white color had not been blended; the white color was just purely masked by the purple color in the F1 Generation. Mendel was then able to make conclusions about simple breeding. He called the purple flowers dominant, because they were more frequent than the white flowers. He called the white flowers recessive, because they were less frequent than the purple flowers. Therefore he concluded that the purple flowers were

First, most people believe that evolution is the accusation humans came from monkeys, however that is just an example of evolution. “Darwin’s general theory presumes the development of life from non-life and stresses a purely naturalistic (undirected) ‘descent with modification’” (“Darwin’s

Although evolution theory is generally believed by people, there still have some unsolved problems with such theory. The biggest problem with evolution theory is that scientists cannot see the process of evolution, all information are stories from our observation at present. Since we can’t actually see how evolution goes, it creates many blind spots which remain to be confirmed.

Evolution is a story that is often told in books, films, and school. It is only normal that when being taught something at such a young age that one will only begin to believe what is being taught. The story of evolution, which states that humans come from monkeys, is a bit of a controversial one. Humans did not evolve from monkeys, nor did they evolve from chimpanzees or any other type of primate extant today. Animals alive today are not the same animals that existed when humans were first recorded. The ancestors of what one would call a monkey today would not have not looked like a monkey. Not only is there a misconception of the story evolution but there is also proof that humans did not evolve from monkeys such as the false identification of what was thought to be a monkey, the splitting and extinction of primates, the consistent changing of animals, and mutation.

I had to investigate the effect of the mutation on the plants and then determine the type of inheritance pattern shown in each case. By following in the footsteps of the Father of Genetics ‘Gregor Johann Mendel’; I’ve attempted to achieve recreating (on a much smaller scale) one of his inheritance experiments conducted in 1856-1863. This particular experiment led him to create the Law of Segregation and the Law of Independent Assortment, which later became known as Mendel's Laws of Inheritance. By following the “Second Law” created by Mendel (Independent Assortment) it was possible to hypothesise that the growth rate of both peas and barley were manipulated by the phenotype and genotype of each individual plant, chlorophyll absorption within each plant and how had the inheritance pattern affected the overall biological mass/growth rate of the collective. Essentially the phenotype ‘Green’ has a higher probability to grow into adulthood without complication due to the Chlorophyll’s ability to absorb more light (to photosynthesise and grow) as opposed to the white or yellow phenotypes which absorb less light due to the colour pigmentation within their leaves. The inheritance pattern of both peas and barely contributes to the genotypes and phenotypes present within the plants. Theoretically had all barley and pea plants of a ‘Green Phenotype’ and the ‘GxG Genotype’ (G: Green) been bred as a species, all of

Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk, known today as the father of modern genetics. Through his experiments in his monastery’s garden, Mendel essentially discovered the basic laws that govern how traits are transferred from parent to offspring using pea plants (Levina 83). Pea plants have seven distinct traits and offspring is quickly and easily produced. Mendel cross-pollinated pea plants that had evidently opposite characteristics. Mendel first produced a parent generation of true-breeding plants, by self-pollinating the plants until he knew they bred true to the seven traits and called these plants the P generation. Next, Mendel produced a second generation of plants, the

It was the works of Gregor Mendel that enabled us to form the basis of the scientific understanding that we have in genetics today. A monk under the Augustinian order, Mendel cared for the monastery gardens simultaneous to his studies in science at the University of Olomouc, of which these duties combined led to the basis of his renowned research. His chosen focus for study was on pea plants, after he noticed an unusual pattern of inheritance relating to the colour of their blossoming flowers. It was apparent that some flowers in resulting offspring were white, despite both parent plants producing purple flowers. A previous interpretation of inheritance was that an offspring’s trait was simply a blend of both parents, but after considering his observations to these unexpected findings, Mendel applied a mathematical formula to prove this otherwise.

Mendel crossbred pea plants over many generations differing in single traits such as height and from his observations was able to conclude that traits expressed in offspring depend on the type of allele an individual receives from each parent because although 2alleles are inherited, only one is expressed. His law of dominance proposes traits are either dominant or recessive; dominant traits requiring one copy of the gene whereas recessive must have 2 copies of the allele present in-order for the recessive trait to be expressed.

Evolution is far more than our ancestors coming from apes. It is more complex than we think. The ideas we have about evolution and the facts we have learned are ever evolving itself. We do not need to fear what it means or that we do not have all the answers for where exactly we come from. There are many parts of the scientific world that is lacking the pieces of information. That being said, there is plentiful evidence that evolution is how we got to this very place.

After initial experiments with pea plants, Mendel settled on studying seven traits that seemed to be inherited independently of other traits: seed shape, flower color, seed coat tint, pod shape, unripe pod color, flower location, and plant height. He first focused on seed shape, which was either angular or round.[17] Between 1856 and 1863 Mendel cultivated and tested some 28,000 plants, the majority of which were pea plants (Pisum sativum).[18][19][20] This study showed that, when true-breeding different varieties were crossed to each other (e.g., tall plants fertilized by short plants), one in four pea plants had purebred recessive traits, two out of four were hybrids, and one out of four were purebred dominant.